1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and an information processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Companies have been providing services for monitoring information on output devices, such as image forming apparatuses, on networks.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-108217 discloses a technique that, in order to access a monitored device among individual devices communicably connected to a network, accesses external information storage using at least one communications protocol supported by the device, stores in an internal storage table information for accessing the device acquired from the external information storage, selects a communications protocol from among a plurality of communications protocols, and accesses the device using the selected communications protocol and the information stored in the internal storage table.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-77649 discloses a method for acquiring information related to a monitored device on a network using HTTP. The method is intended to acquire a uniform vendor name and/or product model name when a vendor name and/or product model name is different.
It has, however, been difficult with the related-art techniques to determine, out of a plurality of output devices that perform various types of processing, an output device according to output object information including information on an object of interest to be output.
Therefore, there is a need to provide an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and an information processing method that can determine, out of a plurality of output devices, an output device according to output object information including information on an object of interest to be output.